Tuesday, December 2, 2014

SUNRISE AVENUE: ”Fairytales - Best Of 2006-2014”

Rating: - Compilation -

Label: Universal 2014
Review by Kimmo Toivonen

Sunrise Avenue are one of the most successful Finnish music exports of the last few years. After four albums they’ve summed up their success with this compilation package, which includes a Best Of CD and a full concert DVD from Hamburg.

If you haven’t heard Sunrise Avenue before, this is a good package to start with. It contains most of their strongest songs and the DVD is quite impressive. ”But… I’ve never heard of them, why should I care”, you ask? Well, the fact that you’re reading this would lead me to believe that you like melodic rock, and Sunrise Avenue are very much a melodic rock band. If you’ve enjoyed Bon Jovi’s recent material there’s a good chance that you’ll like this band too. Throw in some other influences, maybe U2, Goo Goo Dolls, Three Doors Down…

Vocalist Samu Haber has a very pleasant voice and along with his co-writers, he definitely knows how to write a catchy pop-rock song. Some of the lyrics strike me as a bit simplistic and one can easily tell that english isn’t Haber’s first language, but I doubt that this will hinder their career in the UK or US. Probably those little things only add to their charm.

My favorite SA tracks include ”I Don’t Dance”, ”Hollywood Hills”, ”Fairytale Gone Bad”, ”Forever Yours” and ”Angels On A Rampage”, all of which are included on the CD as well as on the DVD. In fact, some of the live versions are better than the studio ones, ”Forever Yours” with its’ cool guitar intro for example.

The DVD was filmed at O2 World Hamburg, where the band played a sold-out show during their ”Unholy Ground” earlier this year (or last year, the date is not mentioned anywhere!). I knew the band was ”Big In Germany” but I didn’t know they were a full-blown arena rock band! The DVD sounds absolutely fantastic and looks pretty amazing too. The band has a great light show, video screens and a big stage. Having seen them live, I don’t think that this DVD completely captured their energy though. I could also be that the band had been asked to remain at certain spots so that they were always well lit for the cameras, I don’t know. I just remember them being more lively on stage.